Finisterra in the Sunshine

Yes, we got it...the sunshine today!!! =) All your sunny thoughts must have helped, because we had a gorgeous day today.

Skip and I nearly strangled our wonderful German hospitaleros last night. They started telling me I needed to get off the computer because they thought I was just going to check email and didn´t realize I needed some time to write a blog. There wasn´t a timer running, and I didn´t have to pay, and when they started harassing me, I told them I would be happy to pay if they wanted me to, but if not, they needed to leave me alone and I´d be done when I was done. What did they want me to get off so quickly for? So they could watch more idiotic German stand-up comedy on YouTube. WHICH THEY DID UNTIL 2:30 AM. Laughing loudly the whole time, never mind the fact that their guests had paid €10 to SLEEP that night. What a bunch of complete CENSORED...you can fill in the blank with your own word. Skip and I were livid. Complete jerks. Can´t believe it after having met so many wonderful Germans on this trip. We try to remind ourselves that 95% of the people and the hospitaleros we´ve met have been simply awesome. However, my next Camino will NOT include Galicia at all. It is a beautiful, beautiful part of the country, but the high-time Camino traffic and the problems associated with it make it totally not worth it.

ANYWAY...woke up this morning to SUNSHINE!!! We resisted our urges to trash the sleeping area and make obscene gestures to the hospitaleros, and headed down to the portside for coffee and breakfast. Which was no longer being served. But we did get the coffee and had some nice quiet morning time. I couldn´t believe it was my last full day with Christa. I´m going to miss her so much. Five different countries were represented for breakfast...Anna from Sweden (whom we met in Foncebadón), Ricardo from Italy (the guitar player from Villar de Mazarife, the night they were singing Proud Mary and all the American classics till late in the night), Christa from Austria, Brad from Australia, and lil´ol´ me from America. Kinda cool when you think about it. We´re missing a lot of the Olympics, but then again, we´re having our own little international party here anyway.

SOOooo...next order of business was to move our bags to the pension house we got for tonight, which is a DREAM. It´s run by a lovely German woman named Ursula, who claims she´s more French than German because she spent some 50 years living in France. Now she runs this pension house with two doubles and some extra-bed space. It´s lovely inside, and the sunshine made it more beautiful, as did the kitchen and the washing machine. None of us needed a full load, but we all threw something in, so I no longer have to ration underwear for my last couple days. It has French windows that open onto a balcony over the street and a view of the Finisterra harbor. Skip says we´re lucky the guys last night were such assholes, or we would´ve stayed there and missed this. I´m glad I didn´t have to spend my last two nights in the sports hall...they haven´t been free like the sports hall would´ve been, but I need Christa´s alarm tomorrow morning to catch the 8:20 bus back to Santiago. If I miss it, I´m screwwwwwwwwed....

Anyway...Skip just walked by this cafe with a HUGE load of ingredients for the masterpiece he´ll be whipping up for us for dinner tonight. I´m hoping for some more of those mashed potatoes he made in Azofra. There are upsides to travelling with a chef.

So after we got settled in at the pension house and got laundry put in, we decided it was time for the Cape and the lighthouse. The sun was out but the sky showed potential for turning dark. So off we went, carrying the things we´d decided we´d burn when we got there. I´d spent some of our coffee time this morning writing a list of a lot of the concerns that have plagued me over the past few weeks and past few YEARS...jotting down insights I´d gained to deal with them...and wound up hating to burn it because I needed to remember the insights. Brad said send ´em out and they´d come back. I had my list, my Mae West hat (battered and bent and coming unwoven and totally wrecked) and the shirt I wore yesterday for my last walk (GOD did it stink...as does my bag...next week I´ll wonder how in the hell I´ve put up with this smell for so long, but right now I barely notice it).

The lighthouse was about 3km away, and we walked along this narrow two-way road that did NOT have room for foot traffic, despite the fact that nearly every pilgrim who walks the Camino and goes to Finisterre heads up this path to the lighthouse. Along the way there was another bronze statue of a pilgrim, like the one at San Roque, leaning into the wind on an eternal journey to the end of the earth and destined never to make it. I got some great shots of the harbor and the lighthouse and the statue and the cross and EVERYTHING.

When we got to the lighthouse, we took some time to wander around and look at things before we headed to the firepit. We all took pictures of ourselves holding the things we´d burn. Brad and Christa both had pairs of socks, and Brad had a bunch of dried sage he´d picked off the roadside back in Frómista and tied to an old hemp bracelet he´d broken. One by one, we put our things in the firepit and watched as they burned. Brad went off on a big rock with his sage and did this Indian sage-burning thing he´s been talking about doing for weeks. Christa paced around the fire and spit into it several times...haven´t asked her what that was all about. I tossed my hat in, watched it start to flame, and was suddenly terrified it was going to catch the wind and blow back out, flaming, onto us (Headline: Wildfire Started in Pilgrim Ritual by Idiotic American Peregrina). Tossed the shirt on top of it and tucked the paper in the corner and watched it all burn.

We won´t catch the sunset at the lighthouse, and we didn´t swim, but hopefully our rituals will work and I´ll get better at keeping some of those concerns from ruling my life anymore. I certainly don´t feel like a new person, but maybe some of that feeling will come later.

We had a beer at the End of the World before we headed back to town, and we shared some music with one another. Christa gave me a beautiful snail shell she found along the path back in La Rioja, and gave Brad a necklace she´d bought back in Manjarin and had been wearing for a couple weeks. It was very touching. I shared some music I found poignant for each of them, based upon things they´d said to me along the way.

We got some shots of ourselves at the stone cross and the 0.0km marker stone...

...and the Camino is over. We´ve done everything we needed to do. As they say, it´s all over but the cryin´.

I´ll get a little teary tomorrow when I have to say goodbye to Christa and get on the bus and start the long trek to Madrid and home, but it´ll feel good to be back, I think.

My brother commented yesterday and said he told Eric to wave to me from the Outer Banks today. Funny. We sat there with our beers, and I was pointing West and telling my friends that in 48 hours, I´d be almost home. I wonder if I was waving west when Eric was waving east. =)

I finally found some beautiful conchilla shells for framing. Good thing I was down to about €5 up on the cape, because they were €1 each and I would´ve bought a million if I could´ve. Can´t wait to see what my mom does with the shells.

And that´s pretty much it, I guess...dunno if I´ll post tomorrow. It´ll be the bus to Santiago, about 2.5 hours to get to the train station across town. I´ll go back through the old town on the way and see if I can find Al or Hank or Mimi and Jocelyn at the cathedral...we figure they might be there by tomorrow. Head back out of town to the train station...catch the train at 2pm, arrive in Madrid at 9...hopefully Dawn will find me at the Metro station she told me to go to, and we´ll hang out and kick around till it´s time for me to leave for the airport at 6am. It´s 6pm now...in 49 hours, I´ll be getting in my dad´s truck and I cannot WAIT.

Been a heckuva trip.

If I don´t post tomorrow, don´t go away forever. I´m sure there will be some postmortem musings.

All for now. Love you all and as always, thanks for reading.